THE LOVE
* click on thumbnails to see larger images
I’ve always LOVE corner furniture: They are not only functional and efficient, but also great decorating pieces within a confined space if selected properly.
In my place, we have this corner desk in our master bedroom (graph 1). It has nice affordance features: drawers to put away important items that are not used too often; a shelf design to allow larger stationaries being stored and arranged properly. I have been having this desk for 5 years. The wood material is not only durable but also gives my apartment a modern look. The usability is great.
The design of a corner desk has also utilized the living space efficiently. Comparing with a regular desk we have in the living room, this corner desk really saves a lot of space: consider a regular rectangular desk of width = 30inch, it takes up at least 900 inch square of the space by the desk itself without considering the chair and user movements around the desk (assume placing in the same corner). But for this corner desk, within the same space, chair placement is included. And since the chair is usually smaller than the desk, the entire space taken by chair + desk is visually smaller too.
THE HATE
* click on thumbnails to see larger images
Just moved to this new apartment, and it comes with in-unit washer + dryer. The door of the laundry section has been driving me crazy!! It clearly tells me to “turn and open” the door every time (graph 1), but this door handle is actually fixed (graph 2). The handle was there simply just to serve the function of “being there,” so people has something to grab when opening the door. I almost broke the door several times. Subconsciously, every time when I want to open that door, my body and my brain just want to turn it so bad and keep trying to turn it but then realized “wait, it’s fixed, and I knew it … why am I still turning it?”
Then when I finally open the door without pulling the handle off, my thumb got caught in between the washer’s lid and the dryer unit on the top, EVERYTIME (graph 3)!!! It hurts so bad and makes me a bit afraid of using that laundry machine (a good excuse to my husband and now he does the laundry, LOL ). The washer lid has a spring hinge, I guess the purpose is to give it a bit lift, so when users open it, the lid will automatically snap to the top (and snap your thumb); when closing the lid, just drop it without much effort (and snaps the rest of your 4 fingers. Please see graph 4)
Gosh, this entire in-unit laundry section is really a nightmare. The door handle is violating the semantic mapping in my head and didn’t consider what are people’s logical constraints when it comes to interacting with a door. The the door handle’s function and usability is not consistent with the door next to it either (graph 5).
As the apartment we are living in just got built in 2015, and the washer + dry unit actually has a big brand name. Apparently, we need to get more people reading “The Design of Everyday Things” before anyone went ahead designing something for other people’s everyday usages.
